Governor Kaine's Mideast Journal, cont'd
An estimated 7,100 Virginians are deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, most of them active-duty or members of the military Reserves. Nearly 500 Virginia National Guard members are serving one-year deployments in the region. My fellow governors soon started asking, “Is everyone in the military from Virginia?”
Surprisingly, I encountered several old acquaintances – Virginia state troopers
on active reserve duty, men and women who lived just blocks from my home in
North Side Richmond, even the son of a General Assembly member – Army Brigadier
General Anthony J. Tata, a 1981 West Point graduate and son of Virginia Beach
Delegate Robert Tata.
After just four hours of shut-eye in the dormitory-like setting at Camp Arifjan, the other governors and I sleepily boarded a helicopter for Ali Al Salem Air Force Base, northwest of Kuwait City, flying in the pre-dawn skies over an eerie landscape of limitless sand, punctuated with orange fires from oil wells.
I met with some Air Force troops based out of Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, and then we boarded a 40-year-old C-130 transport plane for a flight into Balad, a converted Iraqi Air Force Base located just north of Baghdad.
The plane was large, loud and seemed patched together with duct tape. For half the 90 minute flight, Governor Jim Douglas and I rode up front with the four-member flight crew. The crew – pilot, co-pilot, engineer, navigator – revealed something great about our country and military: one was African-American, and two were women.
The war seemed very real on our approach into Balad, and our military escorts insisted that we don Kevlar helmets and body armor. We could see shattered concrete bunkers where Saddam once parked Iraqi jet fighters, and the pock-marked landscape revealed evidence of significant aerial bombing around the facility.
Once on the ground in Balad, we split into two teams to visit more troops from our states. Governor Kenny Guinn and I visited with members of the Nevada Air Guard who operate Predator drones, those unmanned surveillance aircraft. These men and women, decked out in their military flight suits, guide the Predators on crucial intelligence-gathering missions with a joystick while staring at a computer screen. Perhaps parents should be more tolerant of teenagers and their video games.
We then boarded a helicopter to fly 40 miles into Baghdad.